There weren’t as many people as I would have expected at the service. It was held in a small, plain, church that lacked even the adornment of padding for the pews. Mike and I sat near the back, with empty gaps between us and the front. No hymns were included, and the minister drew heavily from the Old Testament—in tone if not explicitly in scripture—admonishing us to live our lives in accordance with blah-blah-blah because our time would soon be upon us, and we would be found wanting. The implication, to me at least, was that Elise had not lived a blameless life. This despite the fact that there were no anecdotes or intimate details to indicate the preacher had ever even met Elise. I wondered if he knew (or cared) that her husband was a philandering hose-monkey whose insatiable greed led t
